State Of Welfare System Needs Fixing, All Agree

June 14, 1992|by TIM REEVES, The Morning Call

Welfare affects everyone in Pennsylvania. Either you get it, or you pay for it.

Welfare will cost state taxpayers $2.9 billion this fiscal year, about 21 percent of the state budget. A person with taxable income of $30,000 will pay $186 into the welfare system this year in state income tax alone.

There are 1.5 million Pennsylvanians getting state welfare in one form or another -- about 13 percent of the population.

In Philadelphia, it's 28.5 percent -- two of every seven people.

Some 775,000 people will get welfare checks this month in Pennsylvania. That's the same as every man, woman and child in Pittsburgh, Erie, Allentown, Scranton, Reading and Easton.

In Lehigh County, 13,230 people are getting monthly welfare checks, ranging from $205 a month for an individual to $670 a month for a family of six. Their numbers are equivalent to the population of Salisbury Township.

With state revenues down and a tax increase out of the question, there is widespread agreement in Harrisburg this year that something must be done about welfare.

But what? That's where the agreement ends.

Gov. Robert P. Casey and some of his fellow Democrats want to save money by shifting welfare costs to the federal government. Casey, to the chagrin of some Democrats, also wants to trim health care benefits for the poor, to save even more money. Health-care costs account for almost two-thirds of the welfare budget.

Casey's cost-cutting would save about $100 million next fiscal year.

A handful of Republicans want to take an ax to welfare, lopping 42,000 people off the rolls and reducing health care benefits drastically.

That would save about $500 million.

But the proposal that's attracting the most attention at the state Capitol wouldn't save much money at all, at least not at first. Its aim is to change the behavior of welfare recipients, using threats of benefit reductions to compel people to help themselves.

The current welfare system "is divorced from the reality of human nature," according to a House Republican position paper.

"Most welfare programs ... have imposed a forced idleness, physically and intellectually, in exchange for government subsistence -- an arrangement that is as destructive to the poor as it is wasteful to society."

Put another way, "You can't have a system that provides free cash and free food stamps and free medical care and expect it not to have an effect on the behavior of people," said state Sen. James Greenwood of Bucks County, R-10th District.

Behavioral reforms have been adopted in Wisconsin and New Jersey, and are pending in California. In Pennsylvania, there are four main proposals:

*Reinstituting the "workfare" program, requiring the roughly 42,000 "able-bodied" welfare recipient to work for their checks, cleaning roadside litter or doing other community work.

*Eliminating automatic benefit increases given to a welfare parent who has another baby.

*Raising from 45 to 55 the age at which a welfare recipient is automatically entitled to year-round benefits.

The state Senate two weeks ago approved a bill, sponsored by Greenwood, that includes some of those "behavioral" reforms. It passed, 39-9.

But Casey and Democrats controlling the House of Representatives say behavioral reforms are election-year pandering to public misconceptions about welfare.

Welfare recipients are "the walking wounded of our society," said Casey.

They need compassion and job training, not dead-end workfare jobs and threats of benefit reductions, according to Casey and the Democratic leaders.

Republican welfare-reform advocates, typically from affluent areas, have no conception of the obstacles poor people face, the Democrats suggest.

And besides, the behavior Greenwood and others hope to change is exhibited by only a small fraction of the welfare population, Casey insists.

"It's unfair and it's misleading to people to suggest that if you make those changes, these costs are going to be under control," Casey said.

Republicans pushing the behavioral changes say taxpayers are on their side. Casey and his Democratic allies are bolstered by Protestant and Roman Catholic church leaders, who have called the behavioral reforms mean-spirited and counter-productive.

The deep divisions over welfare in state government center on a basic question: Are welfare recipients victims of poverty who want to work but can't? Or are they lazy, content to milk the government as long as its hand is outstretched?

As one might expect, statistical and anecdotal evidence suggests there are people of both types on the welfare rolls.

In the state's largest cash-assistance program, Aid to Families With Dependent Children, most recipients (55 percent) have been on welfare less than two years, according to the Department of Public Welfare.

But there are 51,800 people in the AFDC program -- as many people as live in Harrisburg --who have been getting monthly checks more than 10 years, according to the DPW.

"There are people out there taking big-time advantage," said a welfare recipient in Lehigh County, who asked that her name not be used.

Greenwood, the Bucks County senator, said, "There isn't any doubt in my mind we have people on the general assistance rolls, not all of them but too many, who have made a lifestyle out of dependency."

"Are these (reform) proposals absolutely perfect, with no unintended consequences? No." said Greenwood. "Is it acceptable to look at the system and do nothing? No."